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So You Want To Be A Google Whore?

Recently I had a discussion with Josh, who wants to be a Google Whore. Josh got in touch with me with a PM at Digital Point forums. He asked how I was able to start a new site (Laptop Gamers) and have it make money from day 1, while he has put up 44 sites and can barely make anything. Josh has created a blog to write about his AdSense experiment. You can read it here.

Now where did Josh go wrong? He put up 44 niche sites to my one, yet my one site is making more than his 44 combined. From reading his blog posting I can come up with a few reasons why Josh is having trouble. All you future Google Whores might want to pay attention to what I’m about to reveal.

If You Build It They Will Not Come

The key to being a Google Whore is not to have a bunch of websites. The key to being a Google Whore is all about getting traffic. Without traffic, a site makes nothing. This is a numbers game. I know that for every 1000 readers, I am going to get a certain percentage of people clicking on an ad. You can have 1000 websites but if no one visits, it’s going to be really hard to make any money.

The Key To Getting Traffic

The best way to get traffic to a new site is to have other sites in your field write about your site and link back to you. When Laptop Gamers was launched, I sent an email to over 200 technology based sites asking them for a news plug. Many of them gave me the news plug and that started the traffic to the site. Links from other sites were able to bring Laptop Gamers’ traffic to over 6,000 page view in one day. No matter what field you’re in, there are sites that offer news coverage on that field. Your job is to find those sites and add them to your news list. Once you have amassed this list, you will have in your procession a very powerful tool. The news list is the reason I was able to get traffic to Laptop Gamers so fast.

Now just because you sent a request to outside sites asking for a news plug doesn’t mean they’ll give it to you. This leads to the next key to making money on the net.

You Must Have Unique Content

All the contents on Josh’s 44 sites were pulled from “free article services”. In other words, these articles are available for anyone to use. Your chances of getting a free article plugged by 3rd party news sites are next to zero. Also most of the articles from these services are pieces of junk and not even worth reading. Sites that post news have a responsibility to give their readers good, up-to-date information. I highly doubt a free article on “How to reformat Windows 98” counts as up-to-date information. And if you do send such an article to a news site for consideration, the news site will likely send you back a reply asking you to remove them from your news list.

All the contents on Laptop Gamers are unique, written by myself or one of the other editors. They are articles and reviews of the latest technology hardware – stuff that technology news site are looking to tell their readers about. We help them out by providing them with news and they help us out by posting our news. It’s a win – win situation.

Having a bunch of sites linking to you is the key to getting Google’s attention. Google Page Rank is largely determined by how many sites in your field are linking to you. Get enough and the Google spider will come and index your entire site. That is a very good thing!

Start With One Site

Many people make the mistake of thinking “If I get 100 page views with one site, I can get 10,000 page views with 100 sites!” Remember, if you build it, they won’t come. Get traffic going to the first site before you start on any other sites. We produce content for Laptop Gamers, send out a news release, and get traffic. Then we produce more content and repeat the process over again. Pretty soon, the site will become a huge source of information and will develope its own reader base, and its Google Page Rank will increase. You have to keep updating a site to increase or maintain the Page Rank. It is much better to have one site that is constantly being updated than to have 44 sites that are static.

Write About Stuff You Like

As you can read from the above, creating a money making site take work. There really isn’t an easy way out. In order to get your news posted by news site, you simply can’t use free articles. Since you’ll have to produce unique content you might as well write about something you’re passionate about. The TechZone was never created to make money. That site was started because computers are my hobby. If the site didn’t make any money, I would still be updating it today.

Find your passion, start a site and write about it. Find the news sites that cover your industry, build the news list and send out the news release. That will build traffic and traffic is what makes you money.

Thanks for the above information. It’s really good to read what you feel is true on the inside sometimes. My only problem is that my passion doesn’t pay as far a ppc goes..you would have to get thousands of clicks a day to make what a good mortgage site makes with a half dozen clicks..guess mortgages will have to become a passion..oh boy.. 🙂

infornote
As far as I know, there are no submission services for hardware sites. I send out to the news list using Outlook. I send the news release as a BCC so the email addresses are not viewable by the recipients

Jon Sterling
While I don’t have a passion for mortgages, I do have a passion for financil planning and investing. I may start a site about that one day. I heard the CPC rate for such sites are very high. 🙂

Work!? It’s not hard labor man! What work!? It’s not like you’re out in the fields picking apples for 12 hours in the blazing sun! This is too easy man…And I would rather have one great site than 44 site that no one goes too…plus, 44 would be hell to manage!

You just have to be creative. Look in your newspaper. There are stories about money and finance all the time. Tax time is on right now. There 100’s of money/RSP/investing shows going on. Go cover one and write about it.

John! Excellent post! I don’t know how many times I tell people this. You have to ask yoruself ‘am I going to start and build an online site that I enjoy?’ This is important!! Don’t try to make money just to make money – do something you are really interested in and love and stick to it! I suggest getting away from your computer and taking a walk – try to imagine what it would be like if your online blog or site was a success. What would you really want to be doing that drives you? If you don’t care about pizza shops then don’t do pizza shops! If you love marketing then do marketing – if you love techie stuff then do techie stuff. The possibilities are endless! It’s easy to get excited about a niche money making idea and forget your own passions.

Thank you for your comments. I would like to add that chasing niche money really isn’t a great plan. Niche, by its very definition, means small. Why would you want to go after small money when you go aim for the big pond? The TechZone covers everything tech. Laptop Gamers is niche. The chances of Laptop Gamers ever over taking The TechZone is pretty slim, or none. It simply can not cover everything The TechZone can.

Of course you can’t make it too broad or you’ll loose focus. Having a broadly based theme (in my case tech) gives you more freedom and more potential to make more money. Once you’re doing well with that site you can then “break it down” into smaller niche sites.

Google Whore is a term I coined when I first discover the AdSense program back in July 2003. I made $372.16 from AdSense that month. Then I made $1,107.00 the next month and it just kept going up from there.

Back then I didn’t like giving long answers to the question “What do you do?” so I just told people I was a Google Whore. When they ask what that was, I say “I whore Google” 🙂

Anton, it’s not really correct to post my entire article on your site like that. Fair copyright use will allow you to post a quote or two to give your readers an idea on what the article is about. However, posting the entire article is violation of copyright.

I’m just about through with Internet Marketers who charge USD50 to USD150 monthly for article services, duping their members that all they need to do is put up a site, rewrite the articles a bit, promote the website and watch the money roll in; Rinse and repeat with 100 sites earning USD2 each and you’re looking at USD200/day.

I’m so glad you’ve written this guide for us John – I’ll definitely be blogging this entry of yours.

I think your philosophy applies to many areas, not just to increase your page rank. For example, sales from selling a product will increase by increasing the number of visitors that come to your site. It’s all about statistics…based on the number of people that come to your site, an average number will click on the link to where you are selling something. From those that click, there will be a select number that purchase the product…By increasing traffic, you increase these numbers.

"How I Went From Zero to Over $100,000 a Month"

The Original Dot Com Mogul

John Chow, a damn fine person, friend of the community, Ultimate Fighting Championship contestant, member of the Save the Whales Foundation, the man who controls the black market on baby seal pelts and member of the probably yo’ daddy foundation...

John Chow rocketed onto the blogging scene when he showed the income power of blogging by taking his blog from making zero to over $40,000 per month in just two years.